A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

From the news:"A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures."

"Likely"? "appears to violate"? Though he's a judge, it "appears" he isn't confident of what should be clear enough.

From the link: "There are a few things from other areas of the law that have relevance for the law of probable cause. One of these is the area of privacy. A "search" is in many ways a violation of privacy, a quest for something. Therefore, the Katz definition of privacy (expectation of privacy) prevails and in many ways supplements the particularity requirement (searches cannot be exploratory in hopes of finding something; they must be calculated, looking for something specific)."